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For the ‘flutes, lyres, and oboe of high and of deep note’ see D. of A., s. v. tibia and lyra (for πηκτίς). The αὐλός differed from the flute (σῦριγξ), in having ‘a mouthpiece in which a vibrating reed was fitted’; it seems always to have been played in pairs. Varro (in Serv. ad Aen. ix. 618) says the Phrygian ‘tibia sinistra duc (foramina habet) quorum unum acutum sonum habet, alterum gravem’, i. e. it had the two octaves in the same instrument.

The πηκτίς is condemned by Plato (Rep. 399) as being πολύχορδος; it was akin to the Lydian μάγαδις, which had twenty strings.

Aul. Gellius (i. 11), mistranslating H., speaks of the musicians, male and female, as ‘lascivientium delicias conviviorum’; Meyer (ii. 390) thinks the reference is to organized movements of cavalry, controlled by music (cf. Thuc. v. 70 for military music). But the point is simply that the Lydian raids were easy and unresisted.


δὲ τά τ<*>) In antithetical sentences, especially when the first is negative, H. often puts the subject in the second before the δέ, even though (as here) both sentences have the same subject (cf. 66. 3).

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    • Thucydides, Histories, 5.70
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